Winning The Lotto

MCM Furniture - Making A Small Room Feel Large

2015

I know that MCM furniture keeps gaining in popularity. I understand that…but when I go on Craigslist
and see that someone pulled out Gramdma’s old bedroom set – flaws and all – and
wants $1500 for it, I gasp.

I mean – best of luck to the seller. I hope it works out for
them. But really $1500 and it needs work? What planet are you on?

There are a few things about MCM furniture that most people
don’t know:

1st – It’s just older furniture.

2nd – There is A LOT of it

1960s furniture was post war furniture, and just like the
little post-war Sears houses with asbestos siding – it was produced in mass. It
was the first time in history that furniture was mass produced for Middle Class
America.

The furniture is great – built to last and luckily most of it does. However,
unless it has a designer name or a rare-factor– it’s not worth $1500 unless
there is $1000 tucked in the back of the drawer.

I stumbled into the world of Mid Century Furniture over a
decade ago. Not because I am uber-cool (which I am) but because I had a real
problem.

My "built-in-1892" home has really small rooms. After much trial and
error, I found that furniture on tall legs makes the rooms feel larger. Chunky
furniture closed the room up. In addition, smaller scale pieces were practical
and left me with open spaces and still kept the functionality.

My other problem was small children. I had primary colored
plastic crap everywhere. It was making me crazy. MCM furniture has a
homogenous, smooth, classic quality to it that is the visual polar opposite of
primary plastic crap.

I started picking up pieces with legs and simplicity and
refinishing them for my own home. One day a friend walked in and said, “Oh, I didn’t
know you collected Mid Century furniture.”

That was how I found out that it was called Mid Century
Furniture.

That leads me to my final point. I’m really glad there has
been a resurgence of interest into the great Mid Century style of furniture. The
furniture is solid, useful and has an artistic elegance to it that lives on in
a modern home. I love that. I love that it is stylish and affordable. I have
been able to make it my full-time job for seven years. It’s been great.

However, don’t get
sucked into the mania of over-priced furniture.

Buy it because you love it.

Buy it because it’s reusing an amazingly designed, quality
made piece.